Monday's Question (No. 266)--"Booed and Hooted": Fill in the blank as Jimmy Riordan, an organizer of yesterday's Gay Pride parade in New York City, explains why Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was heckled the length of the march. "Nobody is barred from being in the parade. It's completely open to all people. He's just not ______________."

"Completely open to all people."--Daniel Radosh

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"Irish, dammit."--Herb Terns and Matthew Singer

"Al D'Amato."--Shany Mor (Dennis Cass had a similar answer.)

"Supposed to goose step."--J. Nolan

"Anyone's type."--Adam Bonin

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Click for more answers.

Randy's Wrap-Up

The problem with parades is the wrong thing moves--the entertainment, not the audience. That's why the piano is used so seldom in parade music, and it's why we're a nation of fatties--all that standing around waiting for some baton twirler to arrive. When the Vatican finally brought the Pietà over to the United States, they didn't put it on a float and trundle it down Main Street; they displayed it in the reverential hush of the World's Fair. The statue sat; the audience moved, gliding past it on conveyor belts the way Michelangelo intended.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade--and isn't a holiday so much more festive when it has a sponsor?--does both. On Thanksgiving Eve, crowds stroll past the balloons while they're being inflated. The next morning, there's a traditional parade, with Huge Pneumatic Licensed Characters dragged past cold, immobile spectators, lined up 10-deep at the curb, unable to see much beyond the frost-covered head of the person in front of them, and the occasional chunk of plummeting debris.

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So next year, let's switch from the Gay Pride Parade to the Gay Pride Street Fair--good exercise, a cultural celebration, and a chance to buy inexpensive socks. Viva!

They're Not Laughing At You, They're Laughing Near You Answer

"He's just not popular."

The mayor himself sees the jeers not as political protest but as psychological distress. "You should be able to march as the mayor of New York City anyplace you want, and if people can't deal with their own anger over that, that's really something emerging from inside them," he said. "And the Boston Tea Party? Some kind of oedipal thing," he did not add.

The mayor's surprise at being booed was not entirely disingenuous. His policies toward the gay community have been sufficiently benign to cost him some right-wing support in the Senate race. Anti-Giuliani sentiment was particularly vigorous among Hispanic and African-American gays. "Couldn't they be forced into some separate Minority Gay Pride Parade?" he did not ask.

Gay and straight New Yorkers can now come together to boo the mayor following yesterday's announcement of yet another giveaway to Time Warner--this time a $28 million subsidy to the publishing division. The Giuliani administration has dispensed more than $2 billion in tax breaks and electrical subsidies to 50 large corporations, squandering public money and shifting the tax burden to smaller companies.

Basement Workshop Extra

America's Hobby Center (America's favorite hobby headquarters since 1931) just mailed out its terrific new catalog of radio-controlled planes, cars, and accessories. A few highlights:

MEGATECH B2 STEALTH $319 "the most recognizable aircraft in the world."--Thanks to that new "recognizable stealth" technology. And I believe this one comes with a tiny, unreliable map of Belgrade embassies.